


Phantasmagoria for Two

by apolla



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drama, Future Fic, Future Generations, Gen, Modern Era, Modern Westeros, Music, Musicians, Not really sure where this came from but let's go with it anyway, Rhaegar Targaryen is a total rock star, Robert Baratheon is basically Mick Jagger amirite, Romance, What Would Westeros Look Like Several Hundred Years After ASOIAF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:58:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5602537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolla/pseuds/apolla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost 1000 years after Aegon The Conqueror burned Harrenhal, Westeros is at once entirely different and exactly the same. What does a modern, industrialised Westeros really look like?</p>
<p>A supposed democracy, for one thing. Kingslanding's sprawl has absorbed places like Darry; Winterfell the castle is now merely the northern corner of Winterfell City.</p>
<p>Almost 700 years after the first Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen brought the Seven Kingdoms to war, a new pair emerges.</p>
<p>Rhaegar Targaryen is the most loved, most acclaimed, most famous musician of his or any generation. He can do no wrong and appears to be at the height of his creative powers with his sweet, romantic, chivalrous love songs. An abrupt change in musical direction has everyone asking who could have inspired such a change. Not his wife...?</p>
<p>Lyanna Stark is the only daughter of the High Warden of the North and wants nothing more than to play the guitar... but girls don't play guitar. Do they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrHolland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrHolland/gifts).



From _The Westerosi: A History_ by Tyrion Saynde

 

Once upon a time in the great land we now call Westeros, there were Seven Kingdoms ruled over by a single King. Then came the Greatest War, when all humankind fought the terrors of creation and myth for the right to live at all.

The people were victorious, thanks to King Jon of the Black, Son of Ice & Fire and Queen Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons. Many hundreds of thousands died before their triumph, and the lands were filled with wailing grief and pain for years after the end of that war.

With peace came the death of magic and the dawning of The Age of Science, of rational thought and logical enquiry. With rational thought came critical thought, technological and social advances, and only two hundred years after the Greatest War, the people bloodlessly declared themselves free of kings.

The peaceful Reconstruction of Westeros in 504AC into elected warden-ships and democratic process was one of the greatest achievements in the entire ream.

Progress was the great religion of the age and technological advances accelerated to such a degree that many people struggled to keep up.

Louys Martell, a genius from Dorne, harnessed the sun’s powers to create electricity. A generation later, a Westerlands scientist created transmittable sound and vision. Those close to the seat of power rebuilt their world in the industrial image they wanted.

The world moved on until it was unrecognisable from what became called the Age of Heroes as it slipped from history into legend and from legend into distant, half-real myth.

Not all things changed. In the North, the Stark family watched over the people and lands as it had for nine thousand years, since the First Men battled the Children. Those elected to the seven warden ships were, by and large, still those who held the power as they always had as the Great Houses.

Monarchy and feudalism died out, but names like Lannister, Baratheon, Tyrell and Tully remained prominent.

The world changed, human nature did not.

 

*

 

_Winterfell City,_ 985AC.

 

Lyanna Stark was born during a raging winter snowstorm, the likes of which had not been seen for years. Her father, three-times elected High Warden of the North, was at his wife’s side and was the first person to hold the squalling child. There had not been a Lyanna in the Stark family for seven hundred years and Lord Stark had no previous intention of naming her so.

Yet, as his wife lay exhausted and the girl-child looked up at him with the grey eyes of the Starks of old, her tuft of chestnut hair stuck to her head with the fluids of her birth, he could not think of any other name to give her.

‘Lyanna.’

Lyanna she was and Lyanna she remained, no matter the implications of the North’s most powerful man naming his child after the woman who brought Westeros to war.

At much the same time, in the biggest private residence in the capital city Kingslanding, a little boy with pretty blond hair and sad purple eyes, was given his first guitar.


	2. Moon in June

_1002AC, The Winterfell Arena, Winterfell City._

Rhaegar Targaryen was the greatest musician of his generation, and probably three before and three after it too.

Everything he did was notable, everything captured widespread attention. So when she heard him on the radio, singing such a song as was currently sweeping the charts, Lyanna Stark wanted to tear him apart with her bare hands.

_Lay me down upon your silken sheets_

_I will not be complete until we meet_

She lobbed her boot across the room. Who rhymed _sheets_ with _meet_? He was better than such moon-n-June nonsense! And anyway, who was he to write about her like that? How dare he! She ignored how richly his voice swooped along the scale, reaching heights most men could barely dream of and rumbling down low into a frequency that vibrated through her entire being until it reached just the right place.

With her _bare fucking hands._

The door opened and her brother Ben poked his head in. ‘You’re on in five minutes, sis.’

‘I will kill him!’ she shrieked.

‘Save your voice for the audience. Kill him later.’ Ben grinned and disappeared.

In five minutes, she would have to stand in front of twenty thousand people rammed into the Arena, knowing that all of them were really more curious about whether she was the girl the Prince of Westerosi music was singing about.

Her e-Raven screen flashed as she turned off: 46 missed In-Persons and 94 Ravens. She flicked it across the cluttered dressing room table, knocking bottles and jars of face-paints onto the floor. She ignored the lot. It was _time._

How had it come to this? What had she done so wrong to deserve all this? Was it her insistence that girls could play guitarist too? Her demand to try for stardom? Punishment for hubris, perhaps?

Still, did she really deserve _this_? Surely not!

She should never have agreed to join the Kingsrail Tour. That was the moment it all went wrong.

She adjusted her dress one last time, shook her hair to loosen the curls, and picked up her guitar. It was _time_ and she had to prove that she was more than just her surname and definitely more than just the rumours swirling around.

‘Good luck, Lya!’ someone called out to her as she stormed along the winding backstage corridors that led to the stage.

‘Don’t call me _fucking_ Lya!’ she ground out through gritted teeth, not breaking her stride to see who’d said it.

What had once been the diminutive her family used for her was now poisoned and made her want to hit things. Smash things. Bring holy hell down upon them all.

That first Kingsrail Tour. Must have been. Her father had been right all along. Too young... too impressionable... too sheltered... too everything. So much had happened in two years. Really, had it only been two years since Oz Whent heard her demo on Radio North?

She climbed the steps and paused in the wings. The neck of her guitar was smooth against her skin, a constant amongst an ever-changing world. Lyanna took three long, deep breaths, as per her ritual.

On stage, someone was announcing her: ‘People of the North! The Winterfell Arena is proud and pleased to present, your very own princess of hearts, the wild wolf-girl, _Lyanna Stark_!’

Thunderous applause. For _her_. Whatever her father might have said that _was_ right, he’d been wrong about this.

 

*


	3. The Start of Something Great

_Two years earlier, Winterfell Castle, Winterfell City_

Lyanna had been in awe of her father for as long as she could remember. _Everyone_ was either in awe of him or they didn’t know better. Richard Stark, High Warden of the North, was a man to be reckoned with. He was one of the very _best_ people she knew, but he was not an outwardly warm person.

Yet - and yet! - as she faced him down in his office, him leaning over his desk and she on the other side with her arms folded, Lyanna felt not fear of him but of a life unlived.

‘Dad, please listen! It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s the only thing I _can_ do!’

‘Nonsense!’ he barked back, pulling his tie loose a little. ‘You are incredibly bright, you’ll be fine-’

‘You’re not listening to me! I am- I will-’ Lyanna searched for the right words. ‘If I don’t play guitar, I’ll _die_!’

Silence. Even Lyanna thought she’d exaggerated a little bit.

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ he replied sadly. ‘You will not _die_.’

‘I will only _want_ to die,’ she agreed. ‘That seems worse.’

‘You’re fifteen years old, child! You’re being over-dramatic and frankly, like a spoilt and silly child.’

Lyanna crumbled then, not in defeat but disappointment. She slumped into a chair. ‘I thought you’d understand. You let Ned-’

‘Ned is older than you-’

‘He wasn’t when he joined a band! At least respect me enough to be truthful! It’s because I’m a girl, isn’t it? You don’t think _girls_ should strap on a guitar and play music! We’re really good wives and mothers but all the gods forbid we have vocations of our own!’ She leapt back out of the chair and moved towards the back of the room, lest she swipe at him.

‘Shut up, Lyanna! You are being hysterical!’

‘Like a woman, I suppose?’ she snarled back, understanding that she was not making an especially strong argument against him in that moment.

‘And unreasonable!’

‘Am I being unreasonable to demand to live the life I want?’

‘You don’t underst-’

‘When Brandon said he wanted to ditch his business degree to play professional football, you asked what size boots he needed and gave a friend a call! When Ned said he was learning bass to join the Furious Storm, you took him to the Tom O’ Sevens shop yourself! Ben looks like he’s partial to cross-country rally driving so you found him a tutor!’ She took a deep breath to try and steady herself even as she stood up to feel less like she was being talked down to. ‘So, I can only assume it’s because I’m a girl. Well, it’s 1000AC and we don’t care about that anymore!’

‘Sit down and discuss this calmly or not at all.’

‘I tried calm! You didn’t listen. It’s easy, my lord Stark: I play guitar with your blessing or I play guitar without it. The choice is yours.’

Lyanna felt then, strangely, a sense of deep calm settle on her, the serenity of having spoken a long-hidden truth in the form of a decision made. She left the room and her father behind, careful not to slam the door.

In her room, she considered her options: she could cave and live an empty and terrible life of absolutely no consequence; she could pack her suitcase and guitar and leave tonight for the bright lights and slim chances in Kingslanding; she could persuade her father to understand.

The first was an option only if she could accept slow suicide; the second wasn’t much better given that she had few funds of her own, no meaningful contacts in Kingslanding and only Brandon to stay with, and he was always away.

The third needed more evidence for her side of the argument. Richard Stark would be persuaded by logic and facts, not heart and soul.

It was just so frustrating! Her father had bought her first guitar lessons seven years earlier without any fuss or bother. He had probably been looking for something to distract her from the fact that her mother was dead, and had no care whether she would actually like it. She _had_ liked it, had loved it.

Most of the last seven years had been spent honing her craft and learning to sing and write her own songs. School was bearable thanks to her music lessons. She _had_ to make him see sense!

She took out what money she had saved and cycled into Winterfell City with her guitar strapped to her back. She paid for ninety minutes at the only recording studio in town. It was hardly enough time, but she hadn’t the cash for more. She managed to lay down demo versions of three songs, although they were simple and riddled with what she believed were errors. Three copies were made.

The first was for herself, the second for her father. The third she took directly to Radio North before cycling back through the north of the city to Winterfell Castle.

The castle that gave the city its name was at once ancient and new. The Round Tower was impossibly old and some parts of the castle were at least a millennium old, yet the gatehouse had been rebuilt in her grandfather’s time and the glass gardens were a decade-old replacement of a replacement of a replacement.

Technically, the residence was for the High Warden and their family but - excepting a brief period in the 900s - the High Warden had always been a Stark, so it remained the home of the Starks as it had been since the First Men of prehistory and the Kings of Winter and the Lords and Wardens of the North before democracy came.

_There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,_ she thought. A ten-thousand year old cliché.

She did not want to leave Winterfell but music called to her as clearly as a religious vocation might, so she would leave in order to return.

Leaving her bike with a guard at the gatehouse, Lyanna strode past the Administrative Halls directly to the residence, ignoring the smiles and greetings of her father’s staff.

Inside the Keep, she stomped back into her father’s study and left the disk on his desk. Then, she waited to see what would happen.

It was not Richard Stark who blinked first. He seemed to not even have noticed - or had ignored - it for all the reaction she received and days passed.

Then, she started getting messages on her e-Raven.

_‘Amazing!’_

_‘Brilliant!’_

_‘You are so so so so so so good!’_

_‘What a voice! Why don’t you sing at school?’_

It struck then: Radio North was playing her songs! It was a dream! The cynic in her knew it was because the station had seen the Stark name… but the name alone surely wasn’t enough to earn respect or repeated plays. It wouldn’t get her unsolicited Ravens and the Warden’s staff wouldn’t stop her as they passed in the castle yard.

‘Well done Lyanna!’ Her music teacher collared her on Monday morning at school. ‘It sounds so beautifully low-key.’

‘Rushed, you mean. It was.’

‘In a good way. Intentionally so. Urgent. Energised. Well done.’

Agents started to call, but Lyanna was young not stupid, and dodged the notorious ones like Pete Baylis.

Four full weeks after their argument, her father called her to his study. They had hardly spoken in that time - just enough to keep the peace.

A broad-shouldered man sat in the guest chair. Middle-aged, he had a dark ponytail of hair and a shiny grey suit. He looked familiar but she couldn’t place him immediately.

‘Lyanna,’ her father greeted her curtly. ‘This is Oz Whent. He represents various musical artistes.’

Richard Stark sounded like he was chewing the words to then spit them out at her. ‘He has a proposal for you.’

‘Oh?’

Oz flexed his fingers and fixed her with the kind of steady gaze that few men managed. ‘I’d like you to join the huge tour I’m putting together. Best acts in the Seven working their way up the country, south to north. We’re calling it the Kingsrail Tour because we’re going to have our own train chartered. Best established acts and newcomers too. Nice balance. The Furious Storm are already on the bill.’

‘Ned is?’

Sure. And I’d like you to join us too.’

‘Me? Really?’

‘Sure! Great narrative and visuals along with your sound. Just what we need.

‘I’ve not really played much outside small halls here-’

‘She’s only fifteen.’ Her father’s glare would’ve intimidated a lesser man than Whent.

‘Sixteen soon,’ she snapped back. ‘But I’m… untested.’

‘Your EP is being played all over the place. You need representation and strategy whatever you decide about the tour. Say you’ll come.’

‘What’s the catch?’

‘None. 500 a week; five shows a week; travel and accommodation paid for. If you sign with me as agent, I’ll take the standard 15% of your earnings as long as you’re my client. I’ll make you a star.’

It was the easiest choice she’d ever had to make. ‘All right then.’

Oz grinned.

Her father was not so easily overcome. ‘Lyanna, I will not-’

‘Ned is there. He’ll keep an eye on me.’

Oz had an answer to that too: ‘Bring a chaperone too. I’m not here to rip anyone off or exploit anyone. I run a clean, ethical business, Lord Stark.’

‘I’m sure.’ The High Warden was not convinced.

Whent pushed the paperwork across the desk. ‘Read the contract, sir. I keep it all simple.’

‘We’ll have an answer for you tomorrow. Goodbye for now.’

With no more work to do, Oz left. At the very least, Lyanna respected anyone who held their own with the High Warden at his most High Wardeny.

‘Father, please-’

‘I’m reading.’

Silence of an unbearable sort while he perused the contract.

‘It all seems to be in order, as a matter of fact. If you take Annie, you can go.’

‘What, really?’

Was it really that easy, after all their battles?

His sigh was heavy. ‘I cannot deny you, child. You have a gift. But if you misbehave, I will know of it.’

Oh heavenly relief! ‘Thank you!’

Praise from Lord Stark was rarely given and so all the more precious when it was.

‘I expect you to keep up with your studies while you’re gone. I will arrange for tutorials and the like. You’ll be back in time for your last exams.’

‘Father, I-’ Lyanna’s throat thickened until she felt unable to speak. Her eyes burned with tears of the gratitude filling her heart. ‘Thank you. I won’t let you down.’

His grey eyes fixed on hers. ‘No, you will not.’

 

*

 

Three days later, Lyanna travelled to Kingslanding with Oz by hover-boat from Manderly Harbour. The speedy vessel churned up the miles effortlessly and it felt like no time at all that Blackwater Bay came into view, although it was almost two days’ journey even by such modern methods.

Kingslanding was the largest city in Westeros, stretching from the northern suburbs of Brindlewood and Stokesworth to the southernmost and wealthiest district of Kingswood, named after the ancient forest that now only existed in small pockets.

The hotel she was put in was in the oldest quarter: The Old Landing, and she discovered that her room had a view of the historic Red Keep. Once home to kings great and terrible, it was now the greatest museum in Westeros and she had always wanted to go.

The hotel was nice but not luxurious, and the room she and Annie had to share was not quite big enough to be comfortable.

Lyanna didn’t care about that at all.

‘May I visit the Red Keep? She asked Oz as they checked into the hotel. ‘I always wanted to. I’m named after the first Lyanna Stark, you know. I’d really like to see the artifacts…’

Oz threw her a funny look at that, but she was used to it: only Starks really felt proud of the first Lyanna, the girl who started a war and set the Seven Old Kingdoms on fire.

History had been kinder to her descendants than Lyanna herself. Promised Prince Day was celebrated with fireworks and parties, but nobody grieved the woman who died giving the saviour of the world life.

‘You have tomorrow morning free,’ Oz told her. ‘In the afternoon you’ll rehearse with the touring band, get you up to speed.’

‘Will I see Ned?’ Her heart leapt and she hoped so: she had not seen her brother in nearly a year.

‘Soon. They’re finishing up their southern regions tour. Back on Aegonsday.’

‘All right. Thank you Oz.’

‘I’ll get a full schedule for you tomorrow. For now, rest. It was a tough journey.’

She slept wonderfully, the exhaustion of today mixed with the anticipation of tomorrow.

 

*

 

She didn’t make it to the Red Keep the next morning, having slept longer than intended. Lyanna was taken directly to the rehearsal, still yawning and weary.

The band were all friendly enough, but music was a job to them, not a vocation. If it ever had been, the practicalities and realities of trying to make a living from music had ground it out of them. Lyanna’s wide-eyed excitement was in absolute contrast to their barely-interested but very competent efforts.

Annie sat with ear-plugs in a corner of the room, reading the latest Jolene Tyrell-Joans romance novel on her eRaven.

Playing with a full band was a new experience for the girl who had taught herself to play by listening to old Dragonflies disks and she was determined to do well. After eight hours in the rehearsal room she was smothered in sweat, drained and totally exhausted. Her fingers ached from the strings of her guitar and her throat was shredded.

It was the best feeling ever.

As promised, Aegonsday brought her brother to Kingslanding, which was wonderful. It also brought Robbie Baratheon, which was not.

He was a larger than life personality both physically and in personality. He was as gregarious offstage as on it. One of the era’s declared best singers, he believed his own press and it showed.

The Furious Storm tour-coach had barely come to a stop when he bounded off it, pushing her own brother out of the way.

‘Lyanna Stark! Legal at last!’

Behind him, Ned scowled. Lyanna knew that Robbie was as a brother to Ned, but such comments could not endear him. Her sincere smile for Ned froze to fakery as Robbie approached, but he did not notice.

He was at least a foot and a half taller than she, and broad with it, so he loomed over her, making her feel small and weak. Without so much as asking, Robbie lifted her off her feet into an unwanted hug, which she did not return.

‘Robbie, you act as if we’re old friends,’ she said. ‘We’ve me twice. Put me down.’

‘Three times, pretty girl, three!’

‘Twice. Once at Winterfell and then again when the Storm played Moat Cailin.’

‘Three,’ he contradicted. ‘I came to visit when Neddy and me were at school. The Winterval holidays, you remember!’

‘That was _you_?’ She scowled afresh. She remembered a friend of Ned’s who visit and spiked her soda so she vomited all over the Winterval Bush. She had been what, ten?

He beamed proudly, unaware or uncaring how it came across. ‘Old friends, See? And now you’re all grown up!’

‘No, I don’t see.’

‘I’m very glad you’re coming on tour, Lyanna,’ Ned interrupted in his quiet firm way, and he hugged her warmly. ‘I’m glad you’re-’

‘Aye!’ Robbie bellowed. ‘The larks we’ll have!’

Lyanna wanted to be sick all over again. Robbie Baratheon was one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen in real life: chiselled out of the Shipbreaker Bay cliffs in perfect, defined lines: a stone warrior king statue brought to life.

She appreciated his piercing blue eyes and the wild curls of black hair that hung below his shoulders. He had sexual charisma fit to seduce a thousand women. Part of her acknowledged that, but she still felt sick.

‘Mr Baratheon,’ she replied quietly. ‘My chaperone is looking after me and we both made solemn promises to my father, who has placed great trust in me, her and Ned. I would not disappoint him for all the world, and certainly not with you.’

Robbie was crestfallen for a moment, then he recovered and she saw the gleam of challenge in his eyes.

Oh _fuck_.

‘Also, I’m not sixteen yet.’

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> The title is inspired directly by the frankly magnificent song 'Phantasmagoria in Two' by Tim Buckley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6pXE1RFRMI 
> 
> If this fic does nothing but direct you to Tim on Spotify or whatever, I've achieved something. He was quite something.
> 
> I genuinely don't know why this came to me, except that Dr Holland and I were talking one night about what a truly modern Westeros would look like and I started going on about electricity and industrialisation, suburban creep and the rest because I am a ginormous geek who maybe read a few too many books about Queen Victoria's Britain as a kid... and music is my own true love when all is said and done.
> 
> So some names and things might have changed a bit, because that's how humans roll... King's Landing is now Kingslanding, for instance. Just like Brighton was Brighthelmstone until 1810... which isn't that long ago when you think about it... it's a service I provide, this.
> 
> I think the conversation also involved a comparison between Rhaegar Targaryen and Jim Morrison, but that's another story for another time...
> 
> I don't know how often it'll be updated, given that I'm still trying to get Dragon Roar, Wolf Howl done (http://archiveofourown.org/works/4516068/chapters/10272105 if you fancy it).
> 
> Constructive criticism is always welcome. Nice things are always lovely. Flames are more a waste of your time than mine so move on, because life is short, man.


End file.
